Wine

One of my favorite Chateauneuf du Pape wines, Chante Cigale, has two versions, regular and Vieilles Vignes. I bought a case of both from the fantastic 2009 vintage. I no longer have any regulars left. They were delicious; I drank them all – hence the 2011 in the above photo. I do have six Vieilles Vignes left. They were not as good. Yet they were more expensive, as are all old vine bottlings. That’s what Vielles Vignes means. Is wine derived from old vines better than that from young vines? Is it worth the extra price? After a bit of research,[...]

How many of you have come across a bottle of wine with some ornate ribbon on it proclaiming that it won a gold or silver in a wine competition?Did this impress you?I recently had a chat with a wine enthusiast who judges in the California State Fair, the most prestigious such competition in our state. It made me realize that after two decades of studying wine I know very little about these events. The competition is old, going back to 1855. It takes place every June at Cal Expo, near Sacramento. The affair employs 72 judges who assess wines over three[...]

 The intensely competitive, crowded wine world forces wineries into a continuous struggle to distinguish and stratify themselves by quality and reputation. In the New World, with its free wheeling ways, this is easier than the rigidly traditional Old World. Nowhere is the process more cumbersome than in France. Hampered by decades, sometimes centuries old systems of codified classifications, French attempts at novel wine re-assortment can sometimes amount to no less than social revolution. I recently came across a striking example of this with the comfortably familiar Bordeaux classification of Cru Bourgeois, a trademark that’s been around since 1934 with a[...]

In the unregulated, mishmash world of special labels used by California wineries one that often slips by is Estate.  It is an innocuous word, somewhat neutral in what it evokes, certainly less lofty than Reserve, Special Reserve, Limited Release or countless obscure single vineyard designations. In all my years of wine exploration, I have not paid much attention to this word, until now, after a tasting of some older Pinot Noirs from the well respected Carneros winery, Schug.The tasting, held at the winery in a special cave with a long dining table, was led by their winemaker Michael Cox. It[...]

"I can't make out the varietal!"This is a common utterance in our Friday night blind tastings when we are stomped with a puzzling bottle of wine, members of our group rarely offering easy to identify examples. As we struggle to make sense of the puzzle swishing on our palates, our minds are programmed to fit the experience into memory categories based on varietals. When we can easily identify the varietal we are more than half way to solving the conundrum: the identity of the wine.We are  not the only ones whose wine knowledge is founded on contrast between varietals. So[...]